I am a physician, financial planner, educator, and I love to tell great stories. The world is too complicated and doesn’t have to be that way. The goal for this blog is to bring simplicity to the two subjects I know best – financial planning and medicine.
My background - Med School at University of Mississippi and residency at the Medical College of Virginia. I taught at the University of Florida and worked in various emergency departments in the Jacksonville area.
In trying to find a financial planner, I went back to school for fun and found another passion. I founded Life Planning Partners, Inc. in 2004 and felt like I haven’t had a job since. I began sharing stories on the interplay of my two professions and am grateful for audiences all over the country who want to hear my message about medicine, money, and keeping it simple. Please join the conversation.

Suggestions On "Take Two" For The NRA

Discussion about gun regulation pops up every time we have a major gun related event. These tragedies occur so frequently that the NRA has developed a “standard operating procedure” to handle the public relations. They stay quiet a few days, make a pre-announcement saying they will propose solutions, have a press conference promoting more gun ownership, and continue with their legislation to expand unfettered access to guns. Their procedure failed miserably this time as they do not understand the pain in the hearts of our country over the latest mass shooting.

As a physician, I have a distinct interest in gun violence and the cost to our country. The NRA has an adversarial relationship with much of the medical community and maybe they can look to us to salvage their current situation. Today I give suggestions of “Take Two” for the NRA to help them improve their standing after their latest fiasco.

On December 18th, the NRA announced a major news conference to be held on December 21st. In the release, they stated, “The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.” Gun violence results from complex forces – media overload and desensitization of murder and death, poor education on non-violent conflict resolution, and easy access to powerful guns are a few examples. As an optimist, I hoped for useful proposals from the NRA on how we could reduce gun violence in this country. There are many solutions that could stem the tide, and addressing the problem from many angles is needed to provide good results.

On Friday, the NRA held their “press event” and my optimism was crushed. I keep hoping the NRA will come around to some sensibility, but was disappointed again. We’ve all heard the proposals by now:

Create an active database of the mentally ill. (I was amazed at this one – we can keep a database of the mentally ill, but we can’t keep a database of who owns guns and what type they own? Can we do both and cross-reference? That would be very interesting.)

Get rid of violent video games and music videos that glamorize violence. (I’m all for that.)

Put armed guards in every school. The NRA is willing to train those armed guards, and they feel enough citizens will volunteer for duty so the cost will not be high. (Really? Do we really want “volunteers” with guns protecting students? We know this doesn’t work anyway. Mass shootings occur in areas where guards stand ready.)

In the past, I pointed out the NRA’s involvement in Obamacare and I learned the tactics of the NRA first hand. They operate from a place of fear and want to instill that fear in others so their agenda is advanced. Of the hundreds of comments and emails I received from advocates of gun rights, there are many themes:

The 2nd amendment isn’t so much about owning guns as it is for citizens to have the means to overthrow the government in the event of tyranny. The argument against any gun control is a citizen should have firepower that can match the government’s firepower.

Gun advocates like to point out the ignorance of people who are not “into” guns, and therefore they should not be allowed to talk about guns or gun control. To a gun advocate, someone who uses “automatic” when they mean “semi-automatic” should not discuss guns. For the gun advocates, I have this to say – those not “into” guns have a problem with guns that can shoot many bullets in a very short period of time. Who cares what the version is – automatic, semi-automatic, large caliber, what-ever? To share an example of what “regular folks” have a problem with – I found this lovely video on how to shoot your semi-automatic like an automatic by simply looping your thumb in your belt loop.

Gun advocates like to let you know they have a large arsenal and are prepared to overthrow tyranny. I worry about their definition of tyranny.

Gun advocates focus on the other ways people die and how those numbers are larger than the number of people killed with guns. Auto accidents, heart disease, and cancer kill far more people. Yes, they do. And we actively research all of these scourges of society, and death and morbidity have subsequently been reduced in all three. Good news for gun rights – injury and death declined over the past two decades, despite the increase and availability of violent video games and the increase in number of firearms owned by our citizens. It would be great if we had strong research that helps us understand why this is happening, but the NRA doesn’t want anyone doing that research.

As I dug deeply for statistics, I noticed a trend – very little recent information on gun statistics is available from reputable sources such as the Centers for Disease Control. And then I found out why – the NRA actively lobbies to stifle research and education about guns.

We experienced this in Florida as the NRA sponsored a bill to take away a physician’s right to ask about gun ownership. It is standard of care to ask a suicidal or homicidal person if they have access to guns, and pediatricians provide routine gun safety education. The law in Florida put this on ice, and thankfully a federal judge found it unconstitutional. Of course, Rick Scott, the Governor of Florida and NRA member, is appealing that ruling. We’ll see what happens. The NRA wants us to track mental illness, but we can’t ask the mentally ill if they have a gun?

We should all work together to create solutions. Continue objective research and education, improve mental health care, and the least talked about solution – provide everyone with education on non-violent conflict resolution. Does the NRA realize that non-violent conflict resolution is much harder when someone with whom you are having a conversation has a gun at his side?

Gun rights are very political, and the NRA strong arm tactics are putting them in danger of alienating many of their supporters. If they are serious about “meaningful contributions,” I suggest a “Take Two ” press conference where they can be a little conciliatory and throw the public a few bones.

Provide funding and promote gun violence research by independent organizations.

Work with medical and physician organizations on gun safety education.

Promote active questioning of those with suicidal or homicidal tendencies about gun access.

Develop programs on non-violent conflict resolution and teach these in every school.

None of these would have stopped the mass tragedies we had this past year, but they might stem the average 85 gun deaths we have each day in this country. The only thing that may have stopped the mass tragedies would be to get rid of all the guns. They did in Japan, and right now that is not a reality in the United States. Maybe one day we can at least talk about better regulation of guns that quickly shoot a lot of bullets. I would take my proposals as a good faith start from the NRA and hope for the rest another day.

Questions, comments, suggestions? Post here, Twitter @CarolynMcC, or carolyn.mcclanahan@gmail.com. And for my friends from the gun advocates groups, I would appreciate constructive conversation.

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Comments

“Van goes wrong way on Highway and Kills 4″ I want a ban on all cars that carry more than 4 people and are as big as a truck! more people are killed in car wrecks than being shot. Why isn’t there seat belts on school Buses?If people want to nitpick so can I!!!!!!

I think it is time to start policing ourselves I personally know an individual who is very mentally unstable . He owns an arsenal of weapons and ammo . No one will ever try to cross him and keep their distance from him the really scary part is he holds a carry license for a hand gun in NY the question is how do you disarm a ticking bomb that will pass any background check ? I am not a NRA member but also have a large collection of guns as well as a carry permit for a hand gun in NY . I am sure almost every member knows or has heard of some nut that should not have access to a gun why cant we disarm them.

This is very sticky territory and you ask a good question. There are so many facets to this issue and we have to decide as a country how we want to handle problems such as the “undocumented” crazy person with an arsenal. I agree with you that there are a lot out there – I get nice email from many.

If they are undocumented who decides if they are crazy. Is it all the people that do not agree with you on this. And you stated that the NRA snuffs you out on the first amendment, but it looks like you are doing just fine with making your point. And when you say arsenal what do you mean, because a bad person only needs one gun to do their dirty work. More Criminal Prosecution will take the guns off of the street that need to be removed to make us safer.

Actually, the NRA had their puppets in Congress take away funding from the CDC for any gun related research. The CDC was previously responsible for tracking gun related violence and if you go to their web site, you will see no data since early 2000.

I’m grateful that the NRA hasn’t taken my right to speak publicly about guns in the press. They are attempting to take away my right to talk about guns as a physician. Is that right?

I do not think a lot of things are right in this country, and no I don’t agree with everything the NRA does. I would like to see someone who actually is not biased to the ownership of certain firearms, and who understands the difference between military weapons and civilian ones make decisions on the second amendment issues. We already tried the weapons ban and it does not work. I have had firearms and used them for lawful purposes since I was old enough to own them, including for personal and home protection. I also carry a sidearm on the job as a Conservation Officer, and have been around a lot of people who also carry firearms in the field for hunting and target shooting. Lastly I also teach firearm safety to the youth in my community and I think gun bans are the wrong way to go on this. Education to citizens on safe use and storage coupled with taking criminals off of the street is the way to do it.

I would imagine that Federal Judge found it unconstitutional because we still have a right to some privacy for now. I suppose if we are going to trample on the rights of American citizens we might as well lose that to. All because one person decided to do such a horrible act. I think we should stop trying to punish the whole country and try to find out what we can do to restore the value of human life in our country.

Sign this petition because we need to convince Senator Ayotte to vote for any upcoming legislation to ban assault weapons, which she currently opposes. Tell everyone you know to sign. It doesn’t matter where you live, her vote affects us all. Thank you. http://www.change.org/petitions/kelly-ayotte-make-assault-weapons-illegal?utm_source=guides&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=petition_created